Conference Report

First International Conference on MolecularElectronics and Bioelectronics (M&BE1)
March 5-7, 2001
Awaji Yumebutai International Conference Center, Hyogo, JapanThe First International Conference on Molecular Electronics and Bioelectronics (M&BE1), a commemorative event for the 10th anniversary of thedivision of Organic Molecular Electronics and Bioelectronics in the Japan Society of Applied Physics,
was held on March 5-7 (Mon.-Wed.) at the Awaji
Yumebutai international conference center in Hyogo
under the auspices of the Communications ResearchLaboratory and the National Research Institute forMetals. The scope of this conference covered Molecular Nanoelectronics, Fabrication and Characterizations of Organic Thin Films, Optoelectronics andEL Devices, Bioelectronics, and Single Molecular Electronics.
The number of participants, more than 250, was
far greater than the organizers had estimated when
they planned the conference. This is probably because interest in the conference topics directly related
to nanotechnology has been growing rapidly recently.
Professor Shirakawa’s Nobel Prize for chemistry thisyear for his pioneering work in conductive polymers
must have made the research field of the conference
even more attractive.
There were 147 presentations, including 20 invited talks by internationally distinguished researchers, displaying remarkable activities at the frontiers ofresearch. Because of the limited period of the conference, the other presentations were posters-apart fromseven talks in the special contest session. Since thesessions were scheduled in series, the participants
could concentrate on every presentation.

Location
The conference site was near the northern endof Awaji Island in the Seto Inland Sea. This island isconnected to Honshu, the main island of Japan, by
the world’s longest suspension bridge, the Akashi
Kaikyo Bridge, which opened in 1998. The bridge
offers quick road access: about 30 minutes fromdowntown Kobe and about 60 minutes from Osaka.
The site is close to the epicenter of the Hanshin-Awaji
earthquake that struck 6 years ago, but the area has
been completely restored and there are no visible signsof that tragic event.
The Awaji Yumebutai international conference
center has the latest equipment and is located in a
beautifully natural environment. The conference hotel, the Westin Awaji Island, has a fine view of theInland Sea and is connected to the conference centerby corridor so that most of the participants had plentyof opportunities to talk with each other in a relaxing
environment without worrying about transportation.

Plenary Lectures
The conference started with two plenary lectures on the Monday afternoon. The first, “Do weneed Molecular Computers?” was given by Dr. Ari
Aviram (IBM), who has made tremendous contributions to the development of molecular electronics since
the early days of the field. The lecture covered thehistorical background, present developments, and the28

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future of molecular electronic devices.
The second lecture, “Organic Thin
Films and the Path to Molecular Optoelectronics,” was given by Professor
S. R. Forrest (Princeton Univ.). The lecture covered not only the state-of-theart technologies in molecular optoelectronic devices, such as organic lightemitting devices, but also the fundamental mechanisms of several
photoprocesses in organic thin films.

Presentations
Following the plenary session,
the “Molecular Nanoelectronics”
session with five invited talks focusedon the latest research on single molecular functions, a research area directly related tosingle molecular electronics. Doctor Y. Okawa(Riken) demonstrated that a single chain polymerization of diacetylene compounds could be precisely
controlled and visualized by scanning tunneling microscopy. In work described in other talks, scanning probe microscopy was also used as a fundamental tool for access to single molecules.
Two sessions on Tuesday addressed the “Fabrication and Characterizations of Organic Thin Films”
and “Optoelectronics and EL Devices.” In the firstsession, with four invited talks, were demonstrated
various methods for characterizing organic thin films,
including scanning probe microscopy, noise analysis,
dynamic laser analysis, and angle-resolved ultraviolet
photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS). The following session, also with four invited speakers, focused on organic light-emitting devices and related optoelectronicmaterials. Great progress has been made in this fieldrecently because of its practical applications to display devices.
The session with five invited talks on Wednesday focused on “Bioelectronics.” Each talk describeda unique approach to the use in electronics of biological materials such as DNA or proteins. Professor
T. A. Winningham (Univ. of Colorado) showed his remarkable results: that naturally occurring protein crystals with nanometer-scale features can be used asmasks (bionanomasks) for dry etching.
After 16:00 on Tuesday, 117 contributed papers
were presented in a poster session in the corridor connecting the conference center to the hotel. The presentations were categorized into the four fields covered in the invited talks. The friendly environment of
the poster session gave all the participants opportunities for stimulating, creative discussions on various
issues ranging from fundamental principles to thedetails of experiments.

Special Contest

the vote of the conference participants. The winner,
determined by the organizing committee, was Dr. M.
Nakamura (Chiba University), for his proposal “SelfAssembled Molecular Nano-Transistor.”

Social Program
One of the greatest pleasures in the conference lay in the social program. The Welcome Partyon Monday night was preceded by a Bunraku Puppet Drama (Ningyou Joruri) performed by junior-highschool students from Awaji. The language spoken
in traditional Bunraku Puppet Drama is classical Japanese, which is sometimes difficult even for nativespeakers of Japanese to understand. But the English explanation given throughout the drama wasso helpful that the conference participants mustsurely have been amused. The students’ skillful
manipulation of the puppets was so impressive thatsome of the audience must have wished they wereequally skillful in the manipulation of molecules.

Poster Awards
Several awards, totaling 500,000 yen in value,
were bestowed with the intention of encouraging thework of young researchers. The winners were selectedin the same way that the winner of the Special Contest. The Best Poster Award went to Dr. S. Yokoyama(Communications Research Laboratory), and the Outstanding Young Scientist Award went to Dr. J. Perkins(University of California). Six other participants, including five young students, also received posterawards.
This conference has succeeded in providing all
the participants in various scientific fields with an
enthusiastic, fantastic atmosphere, which was surely
created by themselves. The people could thus haveinterdisciplinary interactions with each other. It laid afirm foundation for the molecular-scale electronics.

A special contest for proposals on “Single Molecular Electronics” was held after the oral sessions
on Tuesday. Seven proposals were presented, each ina 15-minute talk, and the finalists were selected by

Do we need Molecular Computers?
Yes, we do!

JSAP International No.4 (July 2001)

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